Mediating Colonial Ecologies: A Postcolonial, Eco-Translational Reading of Gertrude Bell’s Mesopotamia (1920)

This study examines the intersections of translation, ecology, and colonialism through a 1920 colonial report authored by Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), archaeologist, intelligence agent, and British administrator. Written amidst debates over the British Mandate for the former Ottoman Vilayets of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, Mesopotamia: Review of the Civil Administration translates colonial “Otherness” into Western codes of representation, and shapes a complex geographic, cultural, and linguistic ecosystem while framing British administrative restructuring as both necessary and desirable. The report is approached as an act of intersemiotic translation, transforming territorial mapping into textual form. The study also addresses a recent critical edition and Italian translation of Mesopotamia (Bell 2025), which introduces Bell’s magnum opus to Italian readers. It reflects on the numerous linguistic and ethical implications of translating a text deeply rooted in colonial history and considers what it means today to engage with the colonial archive through critical methodologies attentive to its factual, semiotic, and translational dimensions.